The Girl on Shattered Rock: A gripping suspense thriller

by Matt Hilton

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Effie squawked. ‘Look, Becks! The kayaks!’

  The boats floundered in the surf, their hulls smashed open. The damage caused to the kayaks explained the rhythmic hacking sounds they’d heard earlier. Floating with more buoyancy than any of the boats was the corpse of a man — McBride — his blood forming a wide spill on the tide line.

  Without a backwards glance, Effie charged down the steps, followed by Becks. The kayaks were their only way off the island, but they were beyond saving, Leah thought. Nevertheless, she hurtled down after the team leaders, confident that the younger girls would follow. Leah wasn’t interested in the boats, she wanted to see for certain whom Dom and Shelley were fighting with. It had to be another Langston, not Pete. Please not Pete!

  She spilled off the bottom step, scrambled over the coarse grasses past the dissembled camp and onto the pebble-strewn beach. Ahead of her, the two women were torn between trying to rescue the kayaks, dragging McBride’s corpse to dry land, and also joining the knot of scuffling people in the shadow of the northeastern headland. Leah struggled with no such dilemma: she ran directly towards where Dom had taken down his opponent, straddled his chest and was hammering him with both fists, while Shelley skipped around them, urging Dom to further violence.

  Even before she reached them, her worst fear was realised. Though he’d dressed appropriately for the northern weather, there was no doubt about the body shape of the bloody-faced man now lying lax beneath Dom’s fists. She was intimately familiar with every inch of Pete’s body, and the red mask covering his features made no difference. Her first instinct was to help Pete…but he was her creepy stalker, and a murderer. Instead she sank down to her knees on the pebbles and clutched at the front of her jacket as she stared in a state of revulsion at her ex-fiancé. Dom pounded him a final time, and the smack of his knuckles off Pete’s jaw was sickening, but Leah felt no pity. All she had was a sense of disgust — so much she was on the verge of vomiting — counterweighted by disbelief. Dom’s curses and Shelley’s baying for more blood were indecipherable from the dull roar inside her skull.

  Dom collapsed off the prone man and rolled onto his back, hands digging into the pebbles for stability: he breathed raggedly, staring sightlessly at the sky overhead. His mouth was contorted, as if he couldn’t make up his mind to laugh or scream. He’d just beaten into submission the one responsible for murdering his best friend, and for axing to death the old boat captain, and he should have been giddy at the heroic act, but he only looked disturbed. At the abatement of violence, Shelley had fallen silent. She stared down at Pete Langston’s bloody face, and conflicting emotions washed over her features too. Leah supported her weight on her palms, and crawled forward, but halted before reaching her ex-fiancé. Pete moaned, and his head rolled from one side to the other, but he was out of it. She glanced at Shelley, then at Dom, who clawed around and rose to his knees on the far side of Pete. Dom grunted something indecipherable, then leaned in and grasped the front of Pete’s jacket. Leah thought he was about to resume beating the unconscious man, and croaked at him to stop, but was ignored. However, Dom didn’t strike Pete, he rolled him on his side, so that his airway was opened. Bloody saliva poured from Pete’s slack lips.

  ‘Somebody get me somethin’.’ Dom’s hoarse words were ambiguous. ‘A rope or a belt,’ he added.

  Leah pushed up, staring incredulously at the man she’d once loved.

  ‘Get me somethin’!’ Dom snapped at her.

  ‘Wh-what are you going to do?’ He’d called for a belt or rope. What did he intend doing – stringing Pete up the way Rob had been strung up?

  ‘We need to tie him up. Before he wakes again.’

  ‘Make sure he doesn’t wake up!’ Shelley clawed up a rock the size of a tennis ball and hefted it as if she was prepared to smash Pete’s skull.

  ‘Shelley! For god’s sake, put that down.’ Leah struggled to stand, and made sure she was between the vengeance crazy girl and her target. ‘Pete can’t hurt us now.’

  Dom’s attention snapped on her. ‘Pete? You know this bastard?’

  Leah closed her eyes. She couldn’t weather a fresh round of accusations. ‘We need him awake so he can tell us where Harry and Ben are.’

  Becks and Effie crowded in, staring down at Pete: the colour had drained from both their faces. Effie reached for Shelley, gripped her wrist and encouraged the girl to drop the rock. After a shudder, Shelley relaxed her grip and the rock clattered at her feet. It was as if a switch was flicked off and her anger flooded out of her. She sat down heavily, and wept.

  ‘Dom,’ said Becks, barely above a squeak. ‘The kayaks are ruined. He smashed their hulls with an axe.’

  ‘Bastard,’ Dom growled, and he twisted the unresponsive man’s hands behind his back. ‘I should do what Shelley said and smash his skull like an egg shell.’

  ‘No,’ Leah said, ‘that won’t help anyone.’

  ‘You know him,’ he said once more, teeth clenched, and this time it wasn’t a question. ‘Who is this mad bastard?’

  ‘He was my…look it doesn’t matter now. He can’t hurt anyone else. But we don’t know how many others he’s hurt. We still have to find Harry and Ben, and find a way of getting the police here.’ She cast around, searching the kicked up beach where Dom had fought with Pete. ‘Jenna said she heard McBride call him on a radio. Where’s his radio? We can use it to call for help.’

  Dom patted Pete down. ‘Nothin’,’ he said. The other women looked around, hoping to spot the radio, but there was nothing in sight.

  Jenna, Annie and Hayley approached tentatively.

  ‘Look for a radio,’ Leah commanded them. ‘He must have dropped it during the fight.’

  ‘Or he didn’t have one,’ Becks offered. ‘If he was on a boat, McBride could have called him on its onboard radio.’

  ‘McBride must have had a hand-set, though,’ Leah said, and checked with Jenna for confirmation. The girl nodded. But she didn’t move to approach McBride’s corpse: Becks and Effie must have dragged him ashore; he was lying prone, face down, about fifty feet away at the low tide. Would his radio have survived being dunked in seawater? Leah had no clue, but she asked the girls to go and check. They didn’t move, so Effie elected to go and search the dead man for a lifeline off the island. In the meantime, Dom was tired of waiting for somebody to fetch something to bind Pete with. He grabbed and wrenched the cord free from the bottom of his outdoor jacket, heedless that he ripped the hem open to allow the knotted ends through. He knelt, and began tying the cord around Pete’s wrists: immediately the blood blanched from Pete’s fingers, the restraint was so tight. Pete stirred at his mistreatment, groaning loudly and trying to yank his hands away.

  ‘Pack it in!’ Dom snapped. ‘Try to escape and I swear to god I’ll kick your face in.’

  ‘You’re cutting off the blood flow,’ Leah warned.

  ‘Really? Do I look like I give a shit? I should wrap it round his bloody throat.’ Despite his threat, Dom continued knotting the cord around Pete’s wrists.

  ‘If you tie him too tightly, you could cause irreparable damage,’ Leah reasoned.

  Dom gawped. He looked with some degree of satisfaction at Pete’s battered features. ‘Is it anythin’ compared to the fuckin’ irreparable damage he did to that old guy over there, or to Rob? You’ve seen what he bloody did, didn’t you?’

  ‘But…but we don’t know for certain it was him.’

  ‘He acted guilty when we found him standin’ over the old guy.’ Dom looked at Shelley for support, and she nodded. She still sat, numbed, on the pebbles. ‘When we shouted at him, he picked up a rock and threw it at us. It hit me,’ — he touched his chest to indicate where — ‘and it bounced off and hit Shelley.’ His description painted a picture to fit with their shouts Leah and the others had heard from above. ‘Then he tried to do a bunk, and we had to chase him.’

  Leah shook her head. ‘I can’t believe Pete would…’

  ‘Pete would. Go a
nd look at what he did to that old man with his axe.’

  ‘That’s the thing,’ said Leah. ‘If he was the murderer, why run from you?’

  ‘Cause he knew I was gonna kick his bloody head in,’ Dom snapped.

  ‘No. What I mean is, why not use his axe on you? And where’s the shotgun he fired at Harry?’

  Dom shrugged. It didn’t matter to him where the weapons were, he was only thankful he’d caught Pete empty handed, because he’d proven no match in a fistfight. Leah glanced around, then back along the beach where the running fight had occurred. ‘There’s no gun. There’s no axe. Are you certain he…’

  ‘He tried to pan me with a fuckin’ rock,’ Dom argued.

  ‘Maybe because he thought you two were the murderers?’ Leah directed the accusation at Dom and Shelley. The girl glimpsed up, wide-eyed, then over at Dom. He frowned.

  ‘Did either of you see him hurt McBride, that’s the boat captain over there, or not?’

  ‘He…he was standing over him in the water when we got to the beach,’ Shelley said, ‘and then it’s like Dom said: he tried to hurt us with a brick.’

  ‘Did you see an axe,’ Leah stressed, ‘or a gun?’

  ‘He must have dropped them,’ Shelley suggested, but suddenly didn’t look convinced. Effie was returning along the beach: she shook her head at Becks who had been a silent witness to Leah’s interrogation of Dom and Shelley.

  Leah stared at Effie. ‘Well?’

  ‘He doesn’t have a radio on him.’ Effie peered down at Pete, wondering perhaps if he was lying on top of the missing handset.

  ‘What about an axe or shotgun?’

  ‘An axe was used on the kayaks. The hulls are smashed.’

  ‘No. I mean did you see an axe or gun over there?’

  ‘Trust me, if I had, I’d have brought them back with me.’

  Leah didn’t answer, only stared at Dom.

  ‘I don’t care what you say. He acted guilty, and he put up a fight. Until we know otherwise, he’s the murderer and I’m not freein’ his hands.’ Dom stood, rubbing his hands. His knuckles were scraped raw.

  Leah searched for the other younger girls. Annie, Hayley and Jenna were grouped protectively in the lea of the cliff, having retreated a safe distance. ‘Jenna!’ Leah beckoned. ‘Come back here. I need you.’

  30

  Bubbles of mucus popped in Jenna’s nostrils as she stared down at Pete, and her bottom lip quivered.

  ‘Well?’ Leah prompted her.

  Jenna blinked. She shuffled, as if struggling to balance on the unstable pebbles.

  ‘Is this the man that attacked you and the others?’ Leah indicated Pete, as if it weren’t already obvious whom she meant.

  Jenna shook her head.

  Dom scowled. ‘You fuckin’ what?’

  Leah held up a hand. ‘Look again, Jenna.’

  ‘I…I don’t need to. It’s not him.’

  Jabbing a finger at her ex-fiancé, Leah said, ‘This is Pete Langston. You said Langston attacked McBride, then chased you and the others.’

  ‘I thought…’

  ‘Maybe you thought wrong.’ Leah turned a blazing scowl on Dom. Except she’d no right to berate him for beating up Pete. Her ex’s appearance on the island still remained troubling, even if he weren’t the one to wield the axe. ‘Maybe you did too,’ she said to Dom.

  ‘Just hold it, Leah.’ Dom stepped in front of Jenna, as if to challenge her memory of events, but then snapped his gaze back on Leah. ‘Mebbe he wasn’t the one that killed the old guy, I’ll give you that. But what’s he doin’ here? Fucking helpin’ the killer?’

  The others all muttered and murmured among themselves, but none of them were any clearer than Leah or Dom was about Pete’s motivation.

  ‘That dickhead threw a rock at us,’ Dom went on, ‘what else was I supposed to think? That he was here with a fuckin’ rescue party?’

  Ignoring him, Leah again concentrated on Jenna. ‘Think back. You said McBride spoke with Langston on the radio, but then a man turned up with an axe. How can you be sure they were the same man?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Jenna admitted. ‘But what else was I supposed to think? I didn’t know before now what Langston looked like.’

  ‘When you saw Dom beating the crap out of him, you must have known it was a different person, though?’

  Becks interjected. ‘What are you getting at, Leah? Why have a go at Jenna? She was obviously as frightened and shocked as the rest of us.’

  ‘I’m not having a go. I’m only trying to get to the bottom of things.’

  ‘Yeah,’ snapped Dom, ‘’cause what we need right now is Miss-frigging-Marple on the job. You’re only lookin’ for some way to defend your boyfriend, right? That’s who he is to you, isn’t he? Your boyfriend.’

  ‘I’m not defending him,’ Leah said sharply. Pete groaned, and made a weak effort at rolling off his side, though he wasn’t yet conscious. ‘I’m only making sure we aren’t making a big mistake.’

  ‘I’m not untyin’ him,’ Dom stated.

  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about. He’s got a lot to answer to, and I don’t want him freed yet until we know for certain he isn’t a danger to us. What I’m saying is, if it wasn’t Pete who attacked McBride, or heaven forbid, he’s working with the killer, then there’s still a dangerous man out there somewhere, and we’ve no idea what he’s prepared to do next.’

  ‘We have to find Harry,’ Shelley said, jolting to attention.

  ‘And Ben,’ Jenna reminded her. ‘Ben’s out there somewhere, too.’

  Shelley began striding away.

  ‘Shelley! Wait!’ Effie ran after her, and grasped the girl’s arm. ‘We have to stick together.’

  ‘I’m not staying here.’ Shelley wrenched out of Effie’s grip. ‘Not when Harry’s out there alone with some maniac.’

  ‘Wait. Give us a chance to organise ourselves. We’ll…’ Effie looked back at Becks. She didn’t know what they’d do, and her partner was none the wiser. She looked at Dom, then settled on Leah.

  ‘We shouldn’t split up.’ Leah again glanced down at Pete. ‘But somebody should stay here with him.’

  ‘You?’ Dom shook his head. ‘No bloody chance! The second we’re out of sight you’ll probably untie him.’

  ‘I won’t. Besides, I didn’t mean me. I was thinking of you, Dom. We need somebody who can keep him from getting away.’ She wasn’t underestimating Becks or Effie, but when it came down to it, even with his wrists tied, Pete might prove a handful for the women. Dom had already proven he was capable of controlling his prisoner.

  ‘I need to be the one to go and look for the lads,’ Dom countered. ‘If the mad fucker with the axe is out there…’

  ‘He’ll as easy smash your skull in as anyone else’s,’ Becks stated.

  Dom dug a lock knife from his pocket and snapped it open. ‘Let him try.’

  Becks snorted. ‘That’ll do a lot of good against an axe. What if he has more ammo for the gun?’

  ‘McBride was the one who had the gun first,’ Jenna offered. ‘I don’t know if he had more bullets with him.’

  ‘Cartridges,’ Dom said. ‘Shotguns don’t use bullets.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Jenna whispered under her breath.

  Leah had no great desire to look closely at another dead man, but she was first to head towards where McBride lay at the surf line. They required weapons to defend themselves with: perhaps McBride had brought something else more defensible than the small camping knives that Dom and the other team leaders carried. She stumbled to a halt short of the prone figure. Something wasn’t right. He looked bloated, and he hadn’t been submerged in the sea long enough for any decomposition process to begin. When she’d travelled to Shattered Rock with McBride, he’d been a sturdy man, solidly built, but this McBride was simply overweight. She frowned back at the others, then, moved tentatively forwards. The hair on this McBride’s head was white and wispy, his crown freckled and visible between the sparse ha
ir covering. She crouched by the body, reached for it, but her fingers held off an inch or two, shaking gently.

  Becks and Effie were suddenly at her side.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Effie asked.

  ‘It’s…’ Leah looked up at them. ‘Help me roll him over.’

  ‘I already checked him,’ Effie reminded her. ‘There was no radio, and no ammunition either. I’d have found it when I checked his pockets.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ Leah grasped handfuls of cloth and tugged; Becks crouched to help her. The dead man rolled with them, one arm flopping out and slapping down alongside Leah’s feet. She staggered back, and then sank to her knees in the bloody surf. She stared. The wound to his chest was mostly concealed under his clothing, not so two horrendous wounds to his cranium. One of them had split the skull almost to the bridge of the nose; the second had caved in the right side of McBride’s head. No, not McBride, Leah realised, at least, not the McBride who had brought her to the island. His head was crushed, but not so most of his features, and his was the face of a stranger. He was a man two decades older, paunchy with advancing age. ‘This can’t be right,’ she wheezed, and straightened. She peered to the top of the cliff, recalling when last she’d seen McBride, and she’d refused his offer to help assist her with her bags to the cabin. Too familiarly, he’d rested his hand over hers on the handle of her suitcase, warning her about avoiding the wild, untouched side of the island. Could be a wee bit dangerous, he’d said. At the time she’d thought he was looking out for her welfare, but that wasn’t it. He meant if she went there it could prove a wee bit dangerous for him if she poked around where she was unwelcome. She hadn’t looked back at him, had automatically assumed that he’d returned to his boat and sailed back to the mainland. ‘The sneaky bastard,’ she moaned under her breath. ‘He never left the island. He stayed behind to check his secret was safe.’